Hollywood knives

Jamie Oliver's star is shining brightly with plans to take his Fifteen restaurant to
Sydney and New York, and his story to the big screen. He spoke to Ellen Connolly.

The scooter has gone, so too has the north
London apartment. He has even stopped
using the word "pukka". These days
Jamie Oliver drives a Maserati home to
his country manor, where wife Jools and the bubs
are waiting.

Yes, the tousled-haired Essex boy has grown up, grown richer and is soon to grow
worldwide. He has plans to extend his Fifteen
restaurant concept to Sydney and New York —
but this time he's looking to do it with other
people's money.

We saw on Jamie's Kitchen how the Fifteen
venture works. Jamie O (he calls himself that on
the menu) plucked 15 unemployed youngsters off
the streets of London and turned them — well,
some of them — into accomplished chefs and put
them to work in his East End restaurant. The
show was watched by millions in the UK and
Australia. It's likely a local chef will front the venture
in Australia, and already TV networks have
shown interest in broadcasting it.

Oliver sank about $5 million of his own
money into Fifteen in London. Now, he says, "I've
been talking to some corporate figures in Oz and
the States because I need their money, as I've
spent all my own cash."

Oliver is now on his third intake of UK
trainees. Cheeky Chops, the charity he set up to
raise money for the chefs' training, finally made a
profit last month. Oliver was honoured recently
with an MBE for his services to the hospitality
industry (mind you, he copped some criticism for
showing up to meet the Queen without a tie).
And he's still only 28.

Among the first round of graduates in London
was Tim Siadatan. The 20-year-old arrived in Sydney
last week to undertake a year of further training
with restaurateur and Epicure recipe writer
Luke Mangan. Mangan plans to have him working
in his three restaurants, Moorish, Salt and
Bistro Lulu, where he’ll be treated like any other
apprentice "until we work out what he's capable
of".

"It all changed when I was totally exposed (on Jamie's Kitchen). Instead of it being all happy families, it was long hours and stressful. People can relate to that."
Jamie Oliver on why we like him again

Before leaving London, Siadatan was bursting
with all the usual questions. Will it be hot? What
about the food? And "it'll be weird not being in
the freezing cold for Christmas".

He has been working at St John's Restaurant,
a smart diner in London's Farringdon area that specialises in offal, since August when the
trainees were shunted from Fifteen to make way
for the new intake.

"It's a lot more chilled here than at Fifteen,"
he said. "Towards the end of Fifteen it was draining.
We hadn't had a break for a good part of 18
months."

He is enjoying cooking a lot more, he says,
away from the scrutiny of the television cameras
and the demanding 60-hour weeks. And he is
genuinely excited at the prospect of working in
Australia.

Tim Siadatan, one of the first round of
graduates, with Sydney veteran Luke Mangan. DAVID ROSE

Siadatan is one of Oliver's successes — but
what of the other wannabes? Avid viewers of
Jamie's Kitchen and Return to Jamie's Kitchen will
know that only eight of the chosen 15 stuck to the
task. And of those eight, only five have graduated,
each of them embarking on a culinary adventure
like Siadatan's.

Warren Fleet, 26, arrived in Sydney last week
for a one-month stint at MG Garage before heading
to New York's fashionable Nobu restaurant.
Ralph Johnson, 21, and Kevin Boyle, 21, are at
London establishments. Ben Arthur, 22, is in Tuscany.

And what of the attitudinal Kerryann Dunlop,
20, famous for her "crustless" chocolate tarts.
"She's ill and is away indefinitely," Oliver's
spokeswoman tells me. Oh really? I ask incredulously.

It's not serious, is it?
"Look, that's the official line. Basically she's
been suspended but we prefer not to have any
publicity about it. While the show was on air in
the UK, people were wandering into the restaurant
saying, 'Where's that Kerryann girl?' I want
to sort her out for not turning up."
(Another troublesome trainee, Elisa Roche, 25,
is now officially listed as sick, too.)

Oliver says the problem with some of the
trainees was that they were starstruck. Their
celebrity status took over from their cooking.
With the latest round of intakes he has told the
cameras to keep out. "It actually impacts on their
learning. They start to think they are celebrities
without being chefs first," he says. "For some, it
just wasn't for them. Some couldn't hack it. Some
just disappeared off the f---ing Earth because they
couldn't be bothered to turn up."

The new trainees, a total of 30 to compensate
for expected drop-outs, are much more focused
on becoming chefs. "This time we've worked out
who was in it for the cooking and who was in it
just to be on TV."

Before Jamie's Kitchen, Oliver was in danger of
becoming seriously over-exposed, with his cookbooks,
TV shows and role as the face of English
supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. The British press
had started to give him a bit of "an arse-kicking",
as he puts it. They felt he was becoming too big
for his boots, and they may have been right. "I am
the ambassador of British cooking," he told one
journalist. "I have done more for English food
throughout the world in the past two years than
anyone else has done in the past 100. I have put it
on the map, for Chrissakes."

But the launch of Fifteen and the fly-on-the-wall
series that followed it turned sympathy his
way once more. "It all changed when I was totally
exposed, going through all that shit," he says.
"Instead of it being all happy families, it was long
hours and stressful. People can relate to that."

Now, Fifteen is finally a viable operation.
"After months of breaking even and months of
having things nicked and other months losing
money, we're finally up there," Oliver says.
In fact, Fifteen is one of the most difficult
places in England at which to reserve a table.
Bookings for the rest of this year closed in
August. London's top restaurant critics beg Oliver's
publicists for a table. While his presence, or
lack thereof, has been noted by many, it has not
stopped the hordes of diners lining up in the
street in hope of a seat (at the height of Fifteen
fever, it was reputedly receiving 3000 calls a day).

When I book a table for dinner with two girlfriends
from Australia, I ask for a reservation on a
night when Oliver is behind the stove. I am
advised to "take what you get".
My friends are big Oliver fans and arrive
armed with his cookbooks. (Oliver says he is
sometimes irritated by the tourist-like customers,
some of whom are more interested in seeing him
than enjoying the food. "I'll be in the middle of
service with hot things in my hand and then I've
got people asking to take photos or autographs.")

Fifteen lies off London's City Road, at the end
of a cobbled side street in a red brick building. On
the ground floor there is a groovy bar and cafe
serving potent cocktails and lukewarm lattes.
Downstairs is the restaurant. A long, low space,
which is very pink. The walls are spray-painted in
a graffiti-style and feature pink pigs and a word
that looks like Fifteen. The menus are pink and
there's a pink booth running down one side with
moulded white space-age style chairs on the
opposing seating.
I'm sceptical. Will the meals arrive undercooked?
Will the tarts be crustless?

The menu oozes self-confidence. We are
promised a "fantastic salad of Spanish figs and
rocket, bitter winter flowers", "amazing sauteed
mushrooms", "melt-in-the mouth braised veal
cheek".
What we get is a mixed bag. The scallop crudo
with Japanese yuzu lim, pomegranates, fresh
coconut, shiso cress, crispy ginger and herb
shoots is an explosion of flavours, but the braised
veal cheek and the zesty lemon tart are not as
exciting. Despite the prices, this is not a Michelin-star
rated restaurant by any measure. I can't help
thinking that Fifteen is riding a little on the hype.

It's like a movie you've heard so much about but
when you get to see it you're disappointed. Plus,
Oliver isn't there.

He certainly has plenty on his plate. He
spends a lot of time in the US, where he has a
huge following with his show Oliver's Twist. He is
working on another venture to improve the quality
of school lunches in Britain and he may even
film a TV series in which he trains school cooks.

Even his notoriously shy wife Jools is joining
in, with plans for a book on pregnancy and motherhood
(with recipes from hubby, of course).
Amid all this the Olivers intend to move to the
US to set up New York's Fifteen. He wants to
make the move while daughters, Poppy Honey
and Daisy Boo, are still young.

Meanwhile, Hollywood is keen to make a
movie about Oliver and his Fifteen crew, with
Brad Pitt in the lead. The film will be set in America
with the fictional trainees to be an ethnically
mixed bunch from Los Angeles who overcome
hardships to prepare a banquet for the President.

There's also talk of Oliver returning to the original
15 trainees (or should that be five?) over the
next few years for a "where are they now?" show.